The Troop

Locked in the closet, Tim bickers with the two voices in his head: the rational voice called Hal 9000, and the other voice that advocates for the worms, asking Tim to eat. At first, the worm voice is kind and gentle while Tim eats wallpaper. The voice starts getting meaner, and Tim begins to cry without realizing it. Shelley, alone in the cabin, hums a creepy song about eating worms while he seals up the crack between the door and the floor, taking away the last bit of light Tim had.

Shelley sealed off Tim’s light just to torture him emotionally. However, if the others ask, he’ll claim he wanted to prevent any worms from escaping the closet. Everyone else is still asleep outside. Shelley tortures a spider.

Shelley already knows that something is amiss—there are a lot of extra boats and helicopters around, which are probably the military, here due to the dead man who had the worms. Shelley assumes no boat will be coming to pick them up. This thought makes him happy because it means he can probably start torturing and killing humans instead of just animals. He thinks maybe he can kill the rest of the boys and be the sole survivor if a boat ever shows up in the future; it wouldn’t even seem suspicious because the other boys could have died from the virus.

When the other boys wake up, their cooler of food is missing. They start arguing about who could have taken it, and Kent suggests wild animals. The other boys blame each other. Ephraim smokes a cigarette and thinks about how anger and fear are two sides of the same coin.

Erikson says Edgerton doesn’t care about morality, only finding scientific answers no matter the cost. Edgerton started with animal subjects, but eventually wanted to try a human, for which he found Tom Padgett, an apparently desperate man. Edgerton offered Tom a large envelope of cash to participate in a “study” that Erikson suspects Padgett didn’t actually understand the nature of. 

The boys find their cooler on the beach, but no drag marks, suggesting a person carried it. However, the wrappers are all ripped and strewn about haphazardly, suggesting an animal. The boat is supposed to arrive this morning, so the boys wait for it.

Kent actually ate the food in the cooler, but he doesn’t admit his theft to the others. He didn’t plan to eat all of the food, but he lost control. Shelley saw Kent steal the cooler and eat the food, but Kent threatened him not to tell the others.

The boat is over half an hour late. As the boys wonder what has occurred, they notice a cyclone on the horizon. The boys decide to go into the cellar, but not to invite Tim because he’s sick. Tim now only feels hunger and is unaware of other bodily sensations such as bleeding. To stir the pot, Shelley reveals that Kent stole the food and is also sick.

These notes cover Dr. Edgerton’s 13th test subject, a chimpanzee. After being injected with the worms, she shows no reaction for five hours. She then starts making agitated noises and quickly eats all her food. She loses a lot of blood and weight. Edgerton concludes the weight loss is still too fast for “practical applications.” The chimpanzee seems unaware of what’s going on. A worm escapes her body and grows. She falls asleep, wakes up, eats her hair, and attacks her reflection in the mirror.

Dr. Edgerton leaves the room, and Nathan Erikson takes his place with the observations. He is distraught at what he sees. The chimpanzee has bitten through her own tongue, and a hissing sound is coming from inside her body. She then eats the worm that already exited her. Erikson panics and calls for Dr. Edgerton to come back and take over, which he does. More worms burst from the chimpanzee. She peels her flesh off and eats it until she can’t move anymore. She stops breathing and dies. Within an hour, all the worms die too. Like the guinea pig, she lost over half her original body weight in less than a day.

The boys start toward the cellar, only to get in a fight over whether or not Kent should be allowed to join them, since he is sick too. Kent eats insects, his state clearly deteriorating.

Ephraim and Shelley go into the cellar while Newton and Max go with Kent to look for another safe place. Shelley tells Ephraim that he saw something moving on Ephraim’s hands, which are bloody from fighting Kent. Shelley thereby plants a seed of panic in Ephraim. Next, the boys hear a tree crash onto the cabin, presumably crushing Tim. Kent and the other boys are now begging to be let into the cellar. Ephraim lets them all enter but makes Kent sit in a corner and cover himself with a tarp.

Erikson confirms that he and Edgerton were trying to develop a diet pill using freeze-dried worm eggs. Erikson points out that some people already intentionally give themselves tapeworms for dieting purposes; these worms were supposed to just be bigger and faster versions of those. There would also be a pill to get rid of the worms once the person lost enough weight. However, the experiments did not go as Erikson planned.

Once the storm is over, the boys all remain unharmed in the cellar. Everyone except Kent (who is locked in the cellar) goes to survey the damage. The cabin’s roof has collapsed, and Tim is now dead. Hundreds of worms escape from his body. The worms seem to be able to sense the boys’ presence, so the boys get away. The boys are sad about Tim’s death and starting to get angry that adults haven’t rescued them yet.

Edgerton altered the genetic code of a natural type of worm, allowing it to change its own structure to adapt. The worms learned to mutate to suit their surroundings, growing wings or gills, for example.

While regular tapeworms seem to have the goal of overtaking their hosts, modern medicinal cures typically prevent this outcome with tapeworms. However, Edgerton’s devourer worms are stronger and more aggressive than regular worms, so they actually do take over their hosts.

Kent starts hallucinating; his fake father sings the same creepy song about eating worms that Shelley sang to Tim earlier.

Newton poses some tasks they need to complete: find food, get medicine for Kent, and either build some oars for the deceased stranger’s boat or build a new raft. Shelley argues that Kent is going to die anyway. Moreover, nobody would let them come back home even with a boat. Regardless, the other boys still want to try. Newt says Kent should eat some poisonous mushrooms to try and purge the worms, if he can find any in the woods using his field guide.

The boys see the boat that was supposed to come pick them up rapidly approaching Falstaff Island. It’s being trailed closely by two unfamiliar black boats. The first boat arrives at the island, and two men stand up, but the boys are too far away to see who they are. The black boats arrive, throw something, and a small explosion occurs. The first boat sinks, and the other two boats take the men and leave immediately, before the boys can approach.

Newton has to go into the cabin to get his field book, the first-aid kit, and other supplies. His mother’s voice in his head warns him against fetching these items, but he does it anyway. He hears and sees a bunch of worms, but finds what he needs without touching them and quickly goes back outside.

Two men, Reginald Kirkwood (Max’s dad) and Jeffrey Jenks (Kent’s dad) were arrested for stealing a boat and driving it to Falstaff Island, which is under military quarantine. The military chased them and apprehended both men before they were able to get onto the island. Kirkwood and Jenks said they were trying to rescue their children. The military has not answered inquiries about this issue.

Newton, Max, and Ephraim go on a hike to try and find food and poisonous mushrooms. They can’t find Shelley so they leave without him. They eat some edible algae on the beach. Newt also eats an edible grub, but it tastes too bad to eat more. Ephraim says he doesn’t feel right, but Max and Newton say he looks and is acting fine, not like Tim or Kent.